WSJ's Camp Allen Fashion Critique: Bad

How did I miss this? The venerable Wall Street Journal, which has just decided to start an official fashion and design bureau, takes a serious look at “media-mogul fashion” from Herbert Allen’s Sun Valley investment confab earlier this month. Sheesh, this is pretty thin stuff. And good thing they didn’t glimpse David Geffen who pairs his jeans with either a white T-shirt or plaid flannel shirt. We learn that the media moguls, tech executives and financiers ditch their neckties and sport jackets and go Western casual. (Like, duh.) Actually, I’d call it Greenwich, Conn., casual — lots of khakis and cashmeres. But the paper “saw some common style miscues that many executives face with business-casual clothes.” Horrors, the media big shots look — drumroll, please — disheveled! They “may be used to getting their suits tailored, they often buy casual clothes off the rack and don’t pay enough attention to style or fit.” Cited as bad examples were Barry Diller in drawstring pants with a red-and-black-striped zip-up cardigan and a “clashing” orange polo shirt. Rupert Murdoch wore his cable knit tennis sweater with an orange stripe around the neck two days in a row and the color “tones are too strong for his complexion.” Geraldine Laybourne, chief executive of Oxygen media, had on a “mismatched ensemble” and she blamed her husband for it. (“He usually checks what I wear, but he slept late that day.”) Chad Hurley, the 29-year-old hero-of-the-moment YouTube CEO, wore jeans and an untucked dress shirt with the cuffs unbuttoned almost all weekend. The combo made him “look like a little boy wearing daddy’s shirt,” said the newspaper. Actually, I thought he looked just like a valet parker. What I want to know is how many times Terry Semel flipped him car keys to “bring it around front.”